After reading The Economist's terrifying article on the state of the world's oceans (dire, of course, but even more so than I'd thought), plus following the latest tragedy in the Middle East and experiencing another one when I opened my latest bank statement, I've been feeling very humble at the outset of this new year. To wit, with the world so roiled, a preoccupation with good food might be interpreted as escapist at best, delusional at worst. 

On the other hand, lunch with a delightful couple from Baltimore on this icy winter day in Paris reminded me that even in the darkest of times, we still need not only sustenance but the pleasure of good wine, great food and nourishing conversation. And this I found in abundance at Gourmard, a venerable fish house in the rue Duphot in the heart of Paris. I've known this place almost ever since I arrived in Paris,  as I was often invited to lunch here by fashion designers during my improbable stint as an editor at a fashion-driven American press group Fairchild, then located around the corner in the rue Cambon. I think it may have even been Patrick Lavoix, a very elegant man who was the men's wear designer for Lanvin, who very patiently and non-chalantly showed me how to deal with a whole fish (sole meuniere, if memory serves) at the table in a quiet corner of the now radically transformed (into an oyster bar/eat-on-the-go space) ground floor dining room (the main one is upstairs).

Since Gourmard has always been expensive, I hadn't been in a longtime, and so was surprised by the dramatic new decor, a sort of louche lounge look in aubergine cut velvet, deadly nightshade purple, ivory and ebony, with low chairs at low tables and Roman shades in the windows. Quite a change, in fact, from the previous decor, which was rather forgettably modern but still made a feint at the good art-nouveau bones of this place. 

If the original motto for this place coined by founding owner Alfred Prunier in 1872 was "Everything that comes from the Sea," the latest menu by chef Philippe Dubois is more than half meat and the oyster counter of yore on the first floor has disappeared. Clearly this restaurant is making an urgent effort to remain viable and valid not only at the beginning of the 21st century, but at the outset of a potentially harrowing new year. 

With the ambient penny-pinching that's likely to dominate most of meals in mind this year, two of us opted for the 49 Euro all-in menu, which includes three courses, a half-bottle of wine and a half-bottle of mineral water. We fared reasonably well, too, with an odd but not unpleasant starter of crab in a sauce that fell somewhere along the bechamel, hollandaise spectrum, delicious cod steak on a bed of beautifully prepared brandade de morue (shepherd's pie made with lots of garlic and salt cod) and a few tasteless and superfluous dots of arugula juice, and a nice apple pastry dessert. To be sure, the wine was a screw-cap white from the Languedoc Roussillon that was a bit too floral to suit this meal and could probably also be hunted down on the shelves at Franprix for less than 4 Euros, and service was scattered and unsure, as though the waiters had been given lessons in the Costes brothers school of fashionable dining, but hadn't scored very well. 

The third member of our party fared considerably less well than we menu-takers, however, since she had sea bass with girolles mushrooms and haricots vert, a promising sounding preparation that was absolutely tasteless. I also thought that it was nervy to charge 26 Euros for this dish without specifying whether or not the fish was wild or farm raised. 

As fish stocks continue to crash the world over, this distinction will become more and more important, and one that I'll use as a compass as to whether or not I'll eat fish or not. Why? Because pisciculture is mostly a disaster in every part of the world in which it's practiced, from the shrimp farms of Thailand to salmon farms of Chile, Norway and Scotland, to say nothing of the "Tilapia" or Nile Perch that arrives on our plates from various unidentified African destinations with no back story whatsoever.

Before lunch ended, I lurched back to the magnificent art-nouveau toilettes, and was relieved to discover them still intact with magnificent ivy motif tiles, sturdy brass fixtures, massive Sarreguemines lavebos and the marble partitions between the urinals that were installed at the bequest of Charles de Gaulle, or so the story goes. This fleeting experience of a pur jus Belle Epoque atmosphere reminded me, however, of why I had always so urgently wanted to live in Europe, a place where even the homeliest settings seemed to me as an adolescent boy to have a glamour sorely lacking at home.

In any event, Gourmard has slimmed down a lot for this new century, and I'd certainly be willing to give it another go for the good value menu, but I couldn't help but regretting what it once had been, which was a distinguished luxurious seafood restaurant in the best French old-school tradition.

Goumard, 9 rue Duphot, 1st, Tel. 01.42.60.36.07. Mo Madeleine or Concorde. 

A trip to Connecticut proves that one of the more puzzling mysteries of my increasingly distant childhood in Fairfield County remains unsolved. To wit, with a handful of exceptions, how is it possible that a constellation of some of the richest suburbs in the United States is still unable to generate a restaurant culture that's on par with that of nearby New York City? Instead, the standard-issue offer in these gilded precincts runs to mediocre Italian places, third-string ethnic restaurants, and fly-in-amber steakhouses like Bennett's in Stamford.

Until recently, Bennett's was such an old-fashioned place that I actually sort of enjoyed the occasional meal here as a form of gastronomic time travel. It reminded me of the two Manero's steakhouses in Westport and Greenwich where my maternal grandmother would take us for a birthday dinner of shrimp cocktail, steak, onion rings and cheesecake. Bennett's had actually improved on this boilerplate, however, by offering Niman Ranch (organic) meat, a much-better-than-average wine list and a terrific standing-order good-buy on boiled lobsters. A recent meal, alas, revealed that an ownership change had ruined this anthropological relic of a place. Stuffed mushroom caps were a stodgy mess, clams on the half-shell were the size of my thumb nail, and all of the side orders (onion rings, hash-browns, creamed spinach and sauteed mushrooms) that came with our steaks had a decidedly industrial taste. Further, the Niman ranch meat had disappeared, service was terrible (our appetizers arrived before our wine, our main courses were tepid, and then there was an interminable wait before the table was cleared), and the food exhibited sorry signs of food-service-industry short-cuts. 

Dinner at Telluride the following night was considerably better--I loved my wild-rice and chorizo chowder and Block Island swordfish steak with a salad of shaved fennel, golden onions, tomatoes and raisins, but the prices were so heart-stopping that I couldn't help but thinking about all of the terrific food I could eat in New York and, most of all, Paris, for half the price.

On to Boston via Amtrak, and a very good lunch at Scampo, Lydia Shire's new neo-Italian place at the over-hyped Liberty Hotel (the lobby of the hotel was created from the old Charles Street jail). On a cold, wet afternoon, the ribollita (Tuscan vegetable soup) served here was excellent, and my curiosity about an improbably sounding lobster pizza was well-rewarded. Delicately seasoned with gently tangy white cheese, herbs and shallots, the pizza was perfectly baked--the lobster didn't dry out or become rubbery, but the cheese melted, and the flavors of this dish were surprisingly distinct and delicious. Next, Berkshire pork milanese with a saffron risotto rice cake for me and chicken breast with white polenta, spinach and grilled eggplant for Bruno. If the taste of my pork scallops was overwhelmed by greasy breading and an excessively punch salsa, Bruno's dish was impeccably prepared, and overall, I'd recommend this very good-looking restaurant as a terrific place for a casual lunch or dinner. 

Sunday lunch at Barbara Lynch's B & G Oysters in the South End was fabulous. I love the soft Soul sound-track, smart waitresses, little prop card that comes when you order oysters so that you know which ones are which, and nice selection of wines by the glass. Little neck clams cooked Portuguese style with tomatoes, hot pepper and scallions were superb--generously served and perfectly cooked. I also love B & G's lobster roll, since the lobster salad is lightly marinated in lemon juice instead of being slathered with mayonnaise, and it comes with bread-and-butter pickles, cole slaw, and delicious herbed fries. Just two quibbles--there was just a little too much hot pepper on the littlenecks and it's a shame they don't serve espresso (only "regular" American coffee), but I suppose that this latter omission is to keep the turnover brisk at what is, after all, an oyster bar.

Probably no single address I visited during this American trip better showed off how wonderfully good American food has become today, though, than the Village Cheese Shop in charming little Mattituck, New York on Long Island's North Fork. Here we picked up a terrific assortment of American farm house cheeses--Womanchego from Connecticut, Hooligan (also from Connecticut), Lamb Chopper (a sheep's milk cheese from Long Island) and a Peconic Blue to bring back to Paris for a dinner party on Sunday. This cheese, along with a couple of bottles of wine from local vineyards on the North Fork, will surely leave our Parisian friends dumbstruck.

Bennett's, 24 Spring Street, Stamford, CT, Tel. 203-978-7995

Telluride, 245 Bedford Street, Stamford, CT, Tel. 203-357-7679

Scampo, Liberty Hotel, 215 Charles Street, Boston, MA, Tel. 617-224-4000

B & G Oysters, 550 Tremont Street, Boston, MA, Tel. 617-423-0550

The Village Cheese Shop, 105 Love Lane, Mattituck, NY, Tel. 631-298-8556

One of the most consistently important and interesting parts of my work as someone who avidly loves good food as much as I love writing about it is keeping track of what’s up in the world’s other major food cities. This is why I always look forward to a trip to New York, a city where I lived for nine years and a place I deeply love and enjoy. Having been here a week, however, I have to say that a scattershot sampling of various new and old New York restaurants has made me profoundly grateful to live in Paris. Why? For $35 or so, you still eat vastly better in Paris than you do in New York. 

My first meal in Manhattan was with Steven, a dear book-editor friend, at Grano on Greenwich Avenue. Though the Latin American waiter pretending to be Italian was a nice guy, the only memorable aspect of this meal were Steven’s carciofi alla Romana, or Roman style artichokes. Leaving to one side the fact that artichokes are completely out of season and that alla Romana in Rome means griddled between two heavy plaques of metal, this was a tasty little saute. My mozzarella with red peppers and cherry tomatoes came as a mingy serving, and my “macaroni” with tiny meatballs and cherry tomatoes was desperately disappointing for the fact that the pasta had so obviously been par-boiled or otherwise pre-cooked. With a single cheap bottle of mediocre Italian red wine, we both left the table here with a $60 hole in our pockets, which is absurd.

Next meal, Adrienne’s, a highly rated pizza place in the financial district. Though overcooked, the pepperoni and mushroom thin-crusted square sheet pizza I had was delicious and just the kind of thing I dream of in Paris, although most New Haven, Connecticut style pizza is still better than this. The following day was marked by a memorably mediocre meal at Pasacalou, an unfriendly French place in the East 90s where I was mystified by my starter--a bacon-and-cheese souffle in a phyllo pastry cup (who needed the phyllo pastry?), and heartbroken by a bowl of reheated bean stodge passed off as cassoulet. 

Fortunately, a terrific late super at the bar of the Union Square Cafe rescued New York City's reputation for gourmet dining for me the following day. I loved my crudo of Nantucket Bay scallops flecked with jalapeno pepper and lemon zest, and a Savoy cabbage, bacon, Granny Smith apple and robiola risotto was one of the best and most original versions of this heavenly concoction I’ve ever had (Thank goodness I was able to get it without the Balsamic vinegar reduction that would have completely muddled this delicate constellation of flavors, too, and this only because I asked for a very complete description of the dish). Oh if only Danny Meyer would open a contemporary American bistro like the Union Square Cafe or the Gramercy Park Tavern in Paris!

What puzzles me most about dining out in New York, aside from the appalling prices--Paris is so much cheaper than New York, absurdly marked up and usually very dull wine lists, deafening noise and frequently antic service (too present or invisible, with too little in between) is how and why almost all of the really dreary places I’ve eaten in in New York so far are so well rated in a bouquet of different food guides. Consider Il Buco on Bond Street, which everyone raves about.

“There’s very little French cooking left in New York--it’s all Italian these days in Manhattan,” observed bon vivant Bert Sonnenfeld during a meal that Bruno and I had with him and the ever lovely Noel Fitch Riley at this restaurant on Sunday night. We agreed that the grand French restaurants of yore that had once defined good food in Manhattan have almost all sadly vanished, and with a few exceptions--Fleur de Sel, notably among the them, the bistro scene in Manhattan is pretty much withered these days as well. Instead, France has been profoundly shunted off the scene by Italy, and with very mixed results. If the Tuscan country style decor at Il Buco is charming and wonderfully cosy for winter dining, and our starters were pretty good--a lovely kale salad sprinkled with Pecorino cheese, codfish balls with a bland salsa, sausage with resina beans, bruschetta and quince mustard, and empanadas (ordered out of curiosity), the lasagna touted by the waiter was ordinary, as was a wild-mushroom risotto. Ignoring the good looks of the dining room, I’d give this place a 70/100 and a scolding for being so egregiously over-priced.

As we head into 2009, it’s obvious that the New York City restaurant scene is going to take a beating, and I think that convivial, good-value places serving great quality comfort food are going to star in the New Year. Two wonderful examples? Pio Pio, the terrific chain of Peruvian restaurants that have taken the city by storm and which do one of the most delicious roasted marinated chickens I’ve had in a very longtime, and Frankies Spuntino 17. a superb Italian place on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side (N.B. There’s a branch in Brooklyn, too). 

Lunch with Kato and Charles from LA, and Bruno, was one of the happiest and most delicious meals I’ve had in the last few weeks. Kato and Bruno raved about the lentil soup, while Charles and I went with the fennel, celery bulb, red onion, and flat parsley salad in lemon and olive-oil vinaigrette, a truly sublime salad. Next, Charles and I, the meat dudes, loved our Faicco’s Italian sausage (out of the skin) in a saute of red peppers on polenta (more grits than real Italian polenta, but this is just a quibble over the difference between the U.S. breakfast cereal texture and the coarser version found in Italy), while Bruno had a surprisingly good baby watercress salad with pear and gorgonzola and Kato was happy with a pretty little plate of broccoli rabe. All four of us loved a killer trio of American farmhouse cheeses from the Saxelby Cheesemonger’s in the Essex Street market (the best Yankee dairy I’ve eaten in recent memory), and my single espresso rivaled anything I’ve sipped recently in Trieste. 

Frankies Spuntino 17, 17 Clinton Street, New York, NY 10002, Tel. 212-253-2303.  www.frankiesspuntino.com

Pio-Pio, 702 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10025, Tel. 212-665-3000. www.piopionyc.com (plus six other branches in the N.Y. metropolitan area)

Happy Holidays to one and all, and I look forward to sharing more great eating with you in 2009.

The 10th anniversary of Spoon, Alain Ducasse’s world food restaurant just off the Champs Elysees, offers an intriguing year-end opportunity to muse on how much eating in Paris has changed over the course of a decade.

  When Spoon first opened, it was an almost seditious challenge to Parisians to wake up to the rest of the world’s cooking, and discover some of the foreign flavors and dishes that had seduced the globe-trotting Monsieur Ducasse. It was pretty bold gambit at the time, too, since you never saw food served in bamboo steamers in Paris restaurants in those days, and the wine list was--shock, horror--almost entirely Californian. 

   Parisians reacted to this tasty provocation with an odd mixture of curiosity and indifference. This somewhat antic mixing, matching and melding of various different cuisines--Japanese, Chinese, Indian, “American,” Italian and French among them--worked about 60% of the time when it first got out the gate, the problem being that the menu was constructed like some sort of deranged calculus problem, i.e. you were supposed to chose your produce, cooking method and sauce.

   A decade later, the concept has calmed down and been beautifully streamlined, so that today Spoon is actually a fun if pricey place for a meal. Dining here the other night with Steven, a friend who lives in the Napa Valley, we loved the pumpkin tofu with raw marinated scallops and pork-and-shrimp potstickers with spicy (not spicy enough, actually) tomato sauce as starters, and also the nice bright, crisp Galician Albarino that the sommelier cleverly poured to accompany these eats. Next, Steven, who’s a vegetarian, loved his steamed maigre (a white fish) glossed with tangy Greek yogurt, a brilliant idea--so good and so simple, with baby spinach, and my grilled tuna with peanut satay sauce and wok-fried vegetables was excellent, too. 

Next, a superb plate of grilled pork short ribs with tandoori sauce and dramatic shards of transparent, golden pommes Maxim (potatoes) for me, and the tuna for Steven. I wasn’t wild about the Gidget-becomes-a-winemaker style Pays Catalan red the sommelier teamed with our main courses--oddly flirtatious and standoffish at the same time, and unwilling to give the food even a peck on the cheek, but aside from the desserts, which have never been a strong point at Spoon, this was the only really off note in an otherwise excellent meal. And a final word on the desserts--I’d bring back to the U.S. style cheese cake they used to serve, ditch the gimmicky chocolate pizza, and push the Mojito sipper, a wonderful slush of mint and lime that’s the perfect set up for a night on the town. 

Spoon, 12 rue Marignan, 8th, Tel. 01-40-76-34-44. Mo Franklin D. Roosevelt. www.spoon-restaurants.com

  As anyone who lives in or regularly visits Paris now knows, the best food in the city is most often now found in outlying neighborhoods that are long Metro ride away. Happily, the Paris Metro system is fast, inexpensive and safe, which means that there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to miss Jadis, which is one of the best new bistros to have opened in a very longtime.

  Occupying an attractively renovated corner-cafe space in a quiet residential neighborhoood near the Porte de Versailles convention center--this explains the odd crowd of food-loving local hipsters mixing it up with the execs in suits, this burgundy-and-gunmetal gray spot is the new perch of young chef Guillaume Delage, a major new talent with a very impressive resume. Delage was mostly recently at Pierre Gagnaire’s Gaya fish house on the Left Bank, and has also cooked at Michel Bras and Le Pré Catalan.

   This top drawer experience also explains the incredible technical talent you’ll find in your plate here. A perfect example was the stunningly pretty and absolutely delicious artichoke, chicken and foie gras terrine with celery root puree and a slice of red berry compote that I had as a starter. As Bruno rightly observed, this dish was the type of thing one expected to find, usually badly done, at first communion lunches. Here the flavors were vivid but supremely compatible, and each ingredient had a nice texture. Cream of pumpkin soup had the delicious depth provided by excellent stock and a swirl of creme fraiche, while a friend at a neighboring table loved her feuillette of snails and wild mushrooms, which came to the table as an impressive pastry turban.

   Intrigued by what seemed like Delage’s Gallic take on a “financiera,” or a Torinese dish of cock’s combs, duck hearts, kidneys, and other innards, I went for it. Perfectly cooked, it lacked only a light sauce to bind these different elements together. I also liked Delage’s somewhat aescetic take on blanquette de veau, which came in a small Alessi casserole with a plate of perfectly cooked carrots, potatoes, mushrooms and leeks. A perfectly poached pear and a coffee-flavored pot de creme with a homemade Breton style sable biscuit ended this feast, and this excellence of this meal, and the reasonable prices, including some nice and gently priced wines, explained why this place was packed on a rainy Monday night. I can’t wait to go back.  

208 rue de la Croix-Nivert, 15th, 01.45.57.73.20. Metro: Porte de Versaille. Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. 

At long last, I finally had a really good meal in a brasserie.

Unfortunately, it’s not a place I’ll be going back to anytime soon, however, because Le Cafe Anglais is in London, not Paris. For anyone who’s curious about how the great Paris brasserie tradition could and should be resurrected for the 21st century, I’d highly recommend this place, since its only consistent flaw is ratty service--everytime she poured our wine, the waitress spilled it, so that by the end of our lunch a pretty pattern of pale pink dots and splotches had been applied to the white linen. And of course the other problem was that 500 centiliters of Rasteau cost a preposterous 24 pounds (roughly $40).     

But the menu here by chef Rowley Leigh, who does the excellent cooking column in the “Weekend” section of the Financial Times (my favorite weekend read) and who also runs the popular Kensington Place restaurant, is one of those line-ups that induce a tiny panic--they’re just so many things that sound good, that it becomes almost impossible to decide what to have. Among the hors d’oeuvres, a nice term to come across instead of the infelicitous “small plates,” were fennel salami, burrata, monkfish cheeks with cauliflower, and breaded sweetbreads with bearnaise sauce, all things I craved. But finally deciding on the fairly priced lunch menu (three course for 19.50 pounds, $34), I loved my airy homemade cheese-glazed gnocci with trompettes de la mort mushrooms, while my friend Sue raved about the pumpkin and sage risotto. Of course, neither of these dishes are what you’d expect to find on a brasserie menu, and that’s the point--it really is time for Paris brasserie owners to bust open their menus beyond the usual oysters, onion soup, and steaks. 

A great example of what I’m certain would work in Paris is that Le Cafe Anglais proposes a different roast daily. We both went for the Welsh lamb, and it was cooked pink, generously served, and garnished with delicious creamed spinach, to which we added a side of pommes Anna. These finely sliced potatoes cooked with lashing of butter so that that they develop a crispy golden crust at the bottom of the pan are a sublime French classic that’s almost never seen in France anymore, and this was one of the best renditions of this blissfully buttery potato dish I’ve ever had. 

Le Cafe Anglais is also a very pleasant space in which to have a meal. The long rectangular room--curiously enough a part of the Whitely’s shopping center in Bayswater--is a handsome, sunny space with pretty art-deco style chandeliers and an open kitchen, and to add an extra twinge of pleasure to the situation, it occupies the premises of a former MacDonald’s, wonderful proof that sometimes the mad clown can be sent packing. 

We finished our meal with perfectly aged Fourme d’Ambert (a nice creamy blue) with frisee salad, and walking through Kensington Gardens after lunch, I decided the two main reasons this place works so well are that there’s true pride of cooking in the kitchen and also a sincere effort made to source excellent local, seasonal produce. 

Now if only I could take the crew from La Coupole to London on a field trip to see what might actually be done.

To be fair, I did recently have an unexpectedly good meal at Le Cafe du Commerce in Paris, a real old-timer brasserie in the 15th arrondissement that was taken over a few years ago by a dyed-in-the-wool Auvergnat with a real passion for good food. The meal I had was dead simple--oeufs mayonnaise (hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise) and a steak of Limousin beef, but the beauty was in the details--free-range eggs, meat of truly superb quality, real frites, good wines served by the carafe.

So maybe my recipe for a brasserie renaissance would be a mix of Le Cafe Anglais, with its smart and delicious comfort-food menu, and the Cafe du Commerce, which serves such an admirable and affordable take on simple, old-fashioned traditional French food. Oh, and let’s add a good dose of the Huiterie Regis in Saint Germain for good measure, since this cheerful little spot is serving the best oysters on the Left Bank these days, pours great white wines by the glass at very fair prices, and is supremely hospitable.

Le Cafe Anglais, 8 Porchester Gardens, London W2, Tel. 44-207-221-1415 

Le Cafe du Commerce, 51 rue du Commerce, 15th, Paris, Tel. 01.45.75.03.27

Huitrerie Regis, 3 Rue Montfaucon, 6th, Paris Tél : 01.44.41.10.07 

  With Paris tucked under a quilt of low gray clouds for most of the next four months, a new Thai restaurants offers a welcome opportunity for a voyage gastronomique without leaving town.

OTH SOMBATH (pictured) is the new Paris address of the talented Thai chef of the same name. I first tasted his cooking a longtime ago when he had just arrived in Paris and was cooking at the Blue Elephant restaurant near the Bastille. Inspite of the fact that the Blue Elephant's main claim to fame was a dramatic mis en scene of an avalanche of air-freighted orchids, tropical greenery and a little foot bridge over a reflecting pool, I immediately noticed that Sombath, from the northern area of Thailand near its border with Laos, was a serious cook. He's also a charming man, so it was no surprise that he went on to build a brilliant career in Paris, which culimated with Le Banyan, his own little table in the 15th arrondissement, before he was tapped to move to Saint Tropez and set up a restaurant at the groovy Hotel Benkirai.

Now Oth is back in Paris, apparently with the backing of Eddy Barclay, and his new duplex restaurant on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honore in the 8th is one of the prettiest new restaurants to open in the city for a very long time. The serene ivory, gold, and saffron look, which seems to have drawn inspiration from sources as diverse as Courreges, NASA and Thai temples, is the work of interior designer Patrick Jouin, who has emerged as the most influential restaurant designer in Paris right now (his last opening, Le Jules Verne at the Eiffel Tower, is also stunning).

I went for dinner with a friend the second week that this place was open, and though service was still a bit unsure and portions were too small, we had a very good meal. In fact I loved his beef tartare with Thai spices, a starter and a dish that perfectly expresses what he's trying to do here, which is offer his own very suave version of a sexy meeting between French and Thai cooking. If his nems (fried spring rolls) were a little soggy, the shrimp in yellow curry were superb, and we both liked the banana nems with coffee ice cream and red wine sauce. Bravo, too, for such a terrific wine list, including the heavenly Willi Brundlmayr Austrian Gruner Veltliner we drank with our meal, a perfect wine to team with Asian food because its mineral spine stands up to all spices. 

Unfortunately, however, it isn't likely I'll be eating here again anytime soon, since prices are high enough to nudge this place into the special occasion category, and since I actually like Oth Sombath's food so much, I worry for him in light of the strong head winds that are broad-siding the restaurant business in Paris right now. It might, in fact, be a good idea to offer a "Discovery" prix-fixe menu for the next six months or so to build up a clientele for this place.

184 rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, 8th, 01.42.56.55.55.